One Week Story Challenge

It seems after the amazingly inspired progress I made in July, I burned myself out somewhat... I've had several false starts and wonderful ideas but have been having a difficult time initiating anything. I got up to a relatively intense and important scene in my novel, one that starts a climactic upward slope where the whole story changes, and got stuck. I KNOW what comes next but I find myself just staring at the screen like an impotent frog afraid to leap.

This past weekend Joe Konrath ("A Newbie's Guide to Publishing") issued a challenge on his blog for people to write, edit, format, create a cover and upload / publish a book in 8 hours (one work day I suppose?). He did his in one hour while drunk, and while it's not any work of literary genius, it was fun to do and he did it, not with the intense pressure and stress of writing a novel and fretting over every little detail until it's polished perfect, but was instead done just for the pure joy, creativity and FUN of it.

I honestly think that is what I need right now. With my self appointed deadline seeming to speed towards me faster than I can blink (we're already 6 months into this and I've only done 1/4 of my FIRST DRAFT? WTF I'm so screwed!!!!). The frightening amount of work I have yet to do is weighing on my mind and making it that much harder to get it done.

Now, I'm nowhere near ready to tackle a book in one hour, or even eight hours - I'm still too new to the process - but one week to write a decent short story, self-edit and format while my husband creates a book cover sounds doable to me. Because it's not "my novel" / "my baby in book-form" / "something I've been agonizing over for YEARS" it doesn't carry with it the intense pressure I've been feeling lately with Firechild. And I'm playing with it - writing in a slightly different style, using humor, and just plain being silly. I'll probably clean up a lot of the nonsense when I edit, but for now I'm enjoying writing things like "The darkness of my apartment was suddenly ripped open like a vibrant claw rending the belly of an enormous hippo." Yeah I know, absolutely ridiculous and it probably won't make it past my editing eyes, but it was a lot of fun to write.

I started brainstorming the idea for Imaginary Self on Saturday after deciding to do this challenge. I started writing the first page and outlined some of the plot yesterday. I'm anticipating having it finished and (*fingers crossed*) uploaded to Amazon by Thursday night (8/29/13). It's two days short of a full week but I have to work at my real job on Friday.

If anyone wants to follow along, I'll probably post updates on my progress on my Twitter and Facebook throughout the week, along with an announcement when it goes live. (Ohhh I got a tingle when I typed that. ZAP!)

What defines "Success" for a writer?

As I do most mornings while drinking my caffeinated bliss, I stumbled upon a guest post in J.A.Konrath's blog "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing" (one of many I read). This particular post by Alan Tucker, and the heated debate it sparked in the comments, left me pondering what I would define as "success" for myself as a writer. (If you'd like to read the blog post and it's comments, you can find it HERE.)

Let me tell you a little back-story about myself first: 
I suffer from something I like to call "creative depression".
When I was in High School, shortly after finishing the first versions of both Firechild and Lusus Naturae, I hit a creative dry-spell. Some might call it "writer's block" - some might say it was just teenage hormonal dysfunctions at play. Regardless, I sunk into a nasty depression and became highly self-destructive.

One of the side-effects of this was a complete lack of enthusiasm for my education (let's just say I cut almost a full year's worth of classes and was grounded for what felt like an eternity.) My guidance counselor was obviously concerned and, deeming me "too intelligent" to kick out of school, instead sent me to an Alternative High School and recommended my parents put me into therapy (yeah, it was that bad.)

Believe it or not, it was the best possible thing that could have happened.

The alternative school surrounded me with new ideas. I learned new crafts - worked in various creative environments (I interned for a potter, a feminist bookstore, two theatre companies, went to art galleries regularly, learned silk-screen printing - the list goes on and on.) In the two years I spent there I happily absorbed everything I could. My creative nature was satiated and I was content.
On a side-note, this is also where I met my future husband but that's another story.

My college years went very similarly...
I sought out any and all thing that inspired me and in doing so I was happy.
I never finished my novels, though there were several false starts and one or two submissions to agents and publishers which came to nothing.

After college I took a turn back down that road of creative depression. There was always something else taking up my attention, excuses why I just didn't have time blah blah blah.
This creative depression lasted YEARS and I was completely miserable and felt like only half a person.

I got married - I had my daughter - more time passed.

When I became pregnant with my son I felt like I was sinking. Don't get me wrong, things are hard financially and time is a rare commodity, but by the end of 2012 I had finally had enough. I started putting the wheels in motion to get back to what made me feel complete.

This little story only really serves one purpose.
In the pursuit of finishing my novels and finally putting them out there for others to enjoy, I have forced myself to break through the creative depression that has held me down.

I am writing, even if it's only a page or two, EVERYDAY. It feels amazing. The mere fact that I have finally accepted that no matter what, I am going to reach "THE END" and push that little publish button is a success for me.

Writing when for so long I felt I couldn't is a success for me.

While I don't measure up to most people' definition of success - I live in a low-income apartment, we're buried under mountains of debt and when you have to scrape through the change drawer to come up with enough money to buy a gallon of milk for your kids, you don't feel very successful, but doing what I love when so many people don't makes me a success.
No, I haven't made a red cent from my writing (yet), and yes, I could really, really, really use the money (got two kids to feed and I live in New York City - enough said), but there are varying levels of what I'd consider success in this venture .

The first, reveling in my creativity on a daily basis, my mind filled with ideas, plots, roaming the black wasteland of my stories is the first step and I have been successful so far.
Pushing that publish button will be a triumph.
Getting that first check from my booksales, even if it's pocket change, will be a success.
Doing it again and again will be a success each time.

When will I feel truly successful?
In monetary terms, it will be when I can make enough to finally get out of my tiny Harlem apartment and give my children a house to grow up in.

The epitome of success for me?
When I look over at the person sitting across from me on the subway and they have one of my novels in their hands. This last one will probably never happen, but a girl can daydream, right?

Life happens - and we adjust...

I've made some alterations to my writing "plan" for the year to account for the inevitable break I took the past few months. If you're wondering what the difference is, the revision of the first draft has been pushed back to span from July through the end of September.

I'm hoping I can get the new first draft written in 10 weeks so the editing stage would begin the beginning of October. I started writing regularly on it the in the middle of July and thus far gotten an additional 25,000 words added, so I seem to be on track for this new goal.

The remaining plan remains the same on the same schedule. All this really means is that the first stage is now having to be fast forwarded since it's taking up the time slot when I had hoped to be editing.

I admit that it was very naive for me to assume that having the baby, and the first weeks caring for newborn would not affect my plan. There's just no way to account for that level of writing while working on a newborn's schedule. Hoping things go smoothly and there are no more unexpected [haha I had nine months to know he was coming - not exactly unexpected] delays to finishing the book.

On another note, I will be making some needed adjustments and hopefully improvements to the web site so don't be surprised if things are rearranged in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, the changes are for the better and focus more on writing that I need to do and less on distractions.

Until next time,